I tricked the scammer into sending me the web.config back as proof they could fix it. I renamed it to setup.log.rapidNow because it has the correct AsymmetricKey, all the clients are auto-adding themselves back in.

phew.

got few more things to fix yet though. then I really ought to get this old machine having backups

So just to recap what you most likely saw and in case anyone else has a similar question in the future; the database stores information related to session activity but not the actual sessions themselves. If the database is lost then the clients will still callback and just be repopulated as they reconnect.

When backing up an instance of Control there is really only one absolute mission-critical file, the web.config. This file contains the AsymmetricKey. If a client calls back and sees any key other than the exact one they expect they will not reconnect (as @carl0s demonstrated above). The client will continue to attempt to call back even if there is a key mismatch until the client software is uninstalled or the correct key is returned to the web.config.

While we typically do recommend full-installation backups (as instructed here), only the web.config is required to recover from a total server/filesystem loss.

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